MCGamer "Dying"

[4non]

Tenebrous

 

[Lebron12]

Tenebrous

”Last seen 2017” Rip

 

[Hiero]

I don't completely agree with everything you stated. But before I start by saying, I'm in school and have absolutley no time to be hopping on the server frequently, but the nostalgia is what really brought me back.

From what I hear, the Minecraft 'community' is in desperate need of the good ole fashion Survival Games. Right now we are all basically stuck with a bigger server that is not to be named, (just in case they delete the response). I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who are playing said server finally realize there are more places to go. MCSG is definitely what they are looking for.

Also, do keep in mind that the server is not currently open to the general public. In order to join we need to take an extra step and go through discord to actually get in. As with most games, developers/owners label this time period as Alpha because they are still testing.

I have been semi-actively playing MCSG for the past 4 or 5 days and I am yet to notice any of the glitches that you have noticed, other than the block glitch one. But ten minutes later, we were thrown into one of the test lobbies, where the devs were asking us for what we noticed and they fixed it almost instantly after.

This response isn't neatly formatted or anything, but I just felt the need to give my response to a couple of the things you said.

Have a good one!

 

[LGBT]

I don't completely agree with everything you stated. But before I start by saying, I'm in school and have absolutley no time to be hopping on the server frequently, but the nostalgia is what really brought me back.

From what I hear, the Minecraft 'community' is in desperate need of the good ole fashion Survival Games. Right now we are all basically stuck with a bigger server that is not to be named, (just in case they delete the response). I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people who are playing said server finally realize there are more places to go. MCSG is definitely what they are looking for.

Also, do keep in mind that the server is not currently open to the general public. In order to join we need to take an extra step and go through discord to actually get in. As with most games, developers/owners label this time period as Alpha because they are still testing.

I have been semi-actively playing MCSG for the past 4 or 5 days and I am yet to notice any of the glitches that you have noticed, other than the block glitch one. But ten minutes later, we were thrown into one of the test lobbies, where the devs were asking us for what we noticed and they fixed it almost instantly after.

This response isn't neatly formatted or anything, but I just felt the need to give my response to a couple of the things you said.

Have a good one!

If the Minecraft Community is desperate for the "good ole fashion Survival Games" the existing 10,000+ people on the MCSG Discord would be playing.

I addressed the server not being "open" in one of my points. The server is basically open to the public. Anyone can join if they register via Discord. This has been advertised on the Twitter and on Discord multiple times (the two main forms of media). I don't need some randy to explain to me how and what Alpha testing is.

As for the other bugs, you're just very lucky or maybe they were fixed in yesterdays patch, however I encounter these bugs everyday.

 

[Col_StaR]

In spite of the overall cynical outlook of this thread, I think that LGBT actually made a very balanced, polite, and mature criticism thread. Even if I don't agree with every point or the inevitability of the "dying" outcome, I do want to applaud the tone and approach for being more than the usual, "this place sucks and you do too" attacks we've had to deal with in the past.

With that being said, I don't think that a point by point take down would add anything that hasn't already been said. But I did want to offer up some crucial information and perspective that I feel are important additions or counter-perspectives to the current arguments being made.

• Everyone Makes Mistakes, No One Knows the Future.

The simple fact is that many of the issues that we're having now stem from decisions or indecisions that were made months ago. From my community management perspective, the fact that a dedicated community manager position wasn't filled prior to the decision to remake the network delayed major community-facing efforts by a few months. Staff hiring definitely could have been done quicker, along with things like event planning, staff training, and media arrangements, if that position had been filled day 1.

So then why did that role sit empty for so long to begin with? Because at the time, when most of our attention was generated by Twitter, our staff could be counted on one hand, and our Discord was no more than 200 users, no one realized how quickly we would grow nor important that larger leadership role would be; ironcially, you would have needed a community manager to realize how much you would need a community manager. Hindsight is 20/20, but that can be pinned as a genuine mistake made by an oversight and an unexpected increase in popularity.

But while I recognize the mistakes of the past, I also recognize that we can't simply hit the Undo button and make the repercussions go away. Instead, we have to accept the past for what it's done and try to continuously reorient to correct our path. It's never as easy as it looks, but that's the only way to deal with the mistakes of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

• Resources Are (Very) Limited.

I think the core thing that people tend to forget is that MCGamer, while once one of the world's largest and most popular networks, is now a relatively small network. And since we're small, our budgets are small as well. And since we're still in a rough Alpha phase and not ready for prime-time, we don't want to start selling ranks prematurely, thus we don't have any source of income either.

Think about this: the financial burden of two talented full-time developers, the servers across three geographic regions, the website hosting costs, the legal fees required to operate the business, and the IT infrastructure necessary to connect it all... have all been carried by a single man and his personal savings. And there's more expenses in the future as development continues.

So why not hire a team of brand new developers? Talented developers who can work on Minecraft plugins are incredibly rare and thus prohibitively expensive. Given how much they charge and how much time they would need just to familiarize themselves with our systems, we would be bankrupt before they even added any new lines of code. This is one of the reasons we brought back Ava and Subversion: they already know this code by heart, so there was no downtime for system familiarization, just jumping right into development.
Why not put more resources into the servers so that they are more stable and will crash less? Those higher-powered servers are also very expensive, prohibitively expensive especially given our small Alpha player numbers.
Why not have __? Because it's most likely that _ costs money that can be better spent paying our developers to do important things.
Simply put, our resources are limited, so they must be spent carefully and wisely. Things should improve once we feel comfortable enough to sell ranks.

• The Long Alpha Dilemma.

As was mentioned, the Alpha has gone on for quite a while, longer than we had originally anticipated. But we're keeping it open because that's the only way we can squash enough bugs and test new additions as we refine and prepare for the Beta phase. Simply put, we're finding more work than we originally planned for, an inevitability with any sort of software development. But this creates a problem that people may grow tired of the Alpha and lose interest.

So that leaves us with a difficult decision regarding a Long Alpha:

1. Close the Alpha early, lose that valuable information in order to maintain hype, and release into a rougher Beta earlier, or
2. Extend the alpha, gain valuable information at the cost of losing hype, and release into a better Beta later.

In spite of the difficult decision, the leadership team values a better experience over quicker release dates; people remember when things are done right, but no one will remember when things were released early. As such, we are extending the Alpha for as long as we need to in order to make sure we're building our network up the way we want it to be. We'll just need to balance it the best we can going forward.

• The Landscape and Our Lives Changed Dramatically.

The old Fallout quote goes, "War Never Changes", but let me tell you that life and Minecraft certainly have.

While there is still value in the nostalgia behind MCGamer, the reality of operating and managing this community requires us to accept our current circumstances as what they are. Chad and I both work full-time jobs, have side-gigs, and familial commitments, all part of being an adult with families, bills, and responsibilities. The same goes for many of our staff, who were once teenagers with endless time to kill after school now having for juggle university, jobs, and their responsibilities here. Anyone who was an MCGamer veteran has aged at least 3 years since our closure, and a lot can change in nearly 1000 days.

And then there's the changing landscape of Minecraft. While it was once the undisputed king of video games, it is now a Duke or Chancellor after abdicating the throne and living in the shadows of new giants like Fornite, Overwatch, and Apex Legends. Minecraft is older and fewer people are playing, which means that our overall playerbase is now smaller than it was before. That's why so many of our rival communities who once dwarfed us in player counts have all but disappeared. Including things like geography, technology, and player experience, Minecraft's multiplayer community landscape has changed dramatically.

But the crux of the issue is this: even though those things have changed, we can't let them stop us. We have to learn to adapt to the changes in order to survive, and that will always be a work in progress. But I am an optimist that believes that if we want it badly enough to work hard at it, we can succeed in spite of that.
-----

I hope that made some sense and brought some of the leadership team's perspective on these matters. Any community that doesn't grow or adapt well enough to its current climate is bound to fail. But I don't think the fuel tank on MCGamer is empty just yet. Let's work at it and see how the future plays out; at the very least, we can say we gave it our best.

 

[Joey]

Rules. Rules are outdated. I understand you "reformed" the rules slightly, however they are still pretty horrible and not up-to standard for 2019. I'm referring mostly to the text-chat punishments. Filters are just stupid, and banning people for things that are said in game are just ridiculous to me. This is why most people favoured Badlion rules. They were a competitive server and therefore were pretty flexible on chat. They had flexible chat rules, yet fair punishments. E.g Swearing wasn't a mute. Threatening someone (DDOSS Threats) were a ban. Being excessively toxic was a mute. The mute lengths were much shorter and much more fairer. I've seen people banned on MCSG for 5 days for saying things like "I don't like gay people" which is pretty damn excessive regardless of how rude the comment is. I'm fairly certain the average playerbase age has significantly increased as everyone is most likely 15+, there is no reason to be a G Rated server anymore. Let people say what they want, but if they cross the line punish them.

I can't speak to all of the things that you mentioned, but I CAN speak to this one. First, I want to say that I agree with you! Our community has grown up a lot and we are currently working on new things to help accommodate this. Essentially, the community has grown up, so should we. The rules are developed, maintained, and tweaked by a small council that is well versed in our current rules. This council is currently undergoing a little bit of a restructuring process so that way we are outputting the quality that the community deserves.

On the staffing side of things, we are working on training in such a way that we recognize what I mentioned above, and the actions of our staff should reflect that. In the mean time, if someone feels like the punishment (mute or ban) was egregious or over the top, I highly encourage they contact me.

 

[Kraken]

I do hope Kraken reads this, quite a few members of the AU community (myself included) have been arguing with Kraken on the mentioned discord server for the last month or so about map tiering and which maps need to be included. Yet it seems nothing has been done in this regard (obviously TSG2, Alaskan Village and Demon's Breeze were nice additions to the map pool), the only main change has been the re-tiering of Alaskan Village. Although it is good to see staff act on these issues, the fact is that they shouldn't be issues in the first place! All anyone has said since the release of Alpha is to keep everything as it was, not go and change the tiering because you think it is more "balanced". The problem with Kraken and the map team is that they do not have experience with the actual PvP aspect of SG, chest routes and clan battles etc. More map team members need to be added that aren't completely out of the loop when it comes to the SG gamemode itself. As LGBT said above, the REAL classic maps that people enjoyed need to be added (Zone 85, Intertia, Adrenaline and Highway), or the current map pool will get stale.

So I'll address this part.
I haven't been arguing with anyone. I have discussions with the players, that sometimes I disagree with but it never implodes to an argument.
As of Right now chad is adding maps from public vote. I have Zero say in what maps are added. On full release, that jurisdiction will be moved to me and my team.
As for the map tiering, as has been pointed out, some maps had issues importing to the network and some tiering was lost. We did our best to re-do it, but as you said, we rely on community members to help us in that regard as our team is still growing. I cant help but get the feeling your expectations of our team are way too high. We've only just come into alpha, and were still growing the team from scratch. I work 45 hours a week, so I have little to no time to play SG, which gives me little time to understand the chest routes, hence the relying on community members.
As of right now, we are focusing on the build team, and finding people to fill the leadership roles there. This takes time, as we dont want to hire the wrong people that could damage the direction of the community, and I'll never apologize for being careful about who we put in a leadership role.
While I'm not saying you're wrong or right, I am saying I disagree with everything you said, including the way you went about getting this message to me. I only just happened to read the comments of the dev changelog on my lunch break, whereas instead you could have easily DM'd me your concerns on here or discord, which I advise you do in future if you want your voice heard when it comes to anything mapping.

 

[6block]

I work 45 hours a week, so I have little to no time to play SG, which gives me little time to understand the chest routes, hence the relying on community members.

Not going to comment on the rest, but as this is the case, would it not be better to hand off the mapping responsibilities to someone with a little more time and connection to the community? It seems like you want to be the head of mapping, but if other responsibilities are in the way, why not give it to someone more capable of giving the devotion that the role needs?

 

[LGBT]

So I'll address this part.
I haven't been arguing with anyone. I have discussions with the players, that sometimes I disagree with but it never implodes to an argument.
As of Right now chad is adding maps from public vote. I have Zero say in what maps are added. On full release, that jurisdiction will be moved to me and my team.
As for the map tiering, as has been pointed out, some maps had issues importing to the network and some tiering was lost. We did our best to re-do it, but as you said, we rely on community members to help us in that regard as our team is still growing. I cant help but get the feeling your expectations of our team are way too high. We've only just come into alpha, and were still growing the team from scratch. I work 45 hours a week, so I have little to no time to play SG, which gives me little time to understand the chest routes, hence the relying on community members.
As of right now, we are focusing on the build team, and finding people to fill the leadership roles there. This takes time, as we dont want to hire the wrong people that could damage the direction of the community, and I'll never apologize for being careful about who we put in a leadership role.
While I'm not saying you're wrong or right, I am saying I disagree with everything you said, including the way you went about getting this message to me. I only just happened to read the comments of the dev changelog on my lunch break, whereas instead you could have easily DM'd me your concerns on here or discord, which I advise you do in future if you want your voice heard when it comes to anything mapping.

Firstly, I've witnessed these arguments first hand and they are not "discussions". The scenario is usually people complaining saying you've done a terrible job at tiering and need to re-do it, and then you go and play the victim and say "Your trying your hardest" and that everyone needs to "stop being negative, or none of the criticism will be taken into account".

I agree with what Sixey has said. If you do not have the time to properly do your job, hand it off to someone else.

 

[ChadTheDJ]

All community staff here are on our team is on a volunteering basis. We are not a community with a gigantic budget to support people to work full time in all aspects and not sure you can argue that point (we are not even selling ranks yet lol...). We can't come from nothing and expect to have a budget like other larger communities to get full time staff here. Down the road that can change but we are making decisions where we are putting the people in roles they want to work on and also supporting with skills on what they do best. Kraken by example was just brought on for the Map Making team for new content and wasn't originally tasked with map fixes. However he and the map team took on what they can and appreciate them doing their best keeping up with community reports with fixes. We are however adjusting to adding a QA team to have more dedicated people to vet incoming feedback and work with other team members to execute these fixes.

TLDR after reading this entire thread, if I had a nickle every time I heard a dying comment...I just want to reiterate we (including myself) are all here back here for the same reason and that reason is to bring back MCGamer to it's prime. We have so much support and happy to see so many people share the same goals. We are not shooting day 1 to be in our exact state where we left off but things take time to get back to what we have. You can have your opinions and I respect that but I see the support is there and if you don't agree you can go elsewhere. Rome wasn't built in a day but we are working faster than I originally thought even with having side/part timers giving the time they have to make a place where you can enjoy like in the old days.

 

[LGBT]

All community staff here are on our team is on a volunteering basis. We are not a community with a gigantic budget to support people to work full time in all aspects and not sure you can argue that point (we are not even selling ranks yet lol...). We can't come from nothing and expect to have a budget like other larger communities to get full time staff here. Down the road that can change but we are making decisions where we are putting the people in roles they want to work on and also supporting with skills on what they do best. Kraken by example was just brought on for the Map Making team for new content and wasn't originally tasked with map fixes. We are however adjusting to adding a QA team to have more dedicated people to vet incoming feedback and work with other team members to execute these fixes.

TLDR after reading this entire thread, if I had a nickle every time I heard a dying comment...I just want to reiterate we (including myself) are all here back here for the same reason and that reason is to bring back MCGamer to it's prime. We have so much support and happy to see so many people share the same goals. We are not shooting day 1 to be in our exact state where we left off but things take time to get back to what we have. You can have your opinions and I respect that but I see the support is there and if you don't agree you can go elsewhere. Rome wasn't built in a day but we are working faster than I originally thought even with having side/part timers giving the time they have to make a place where you can enjoy like in the old days.

As I've mentioned in the thread, this wasn't meant to be insulting or meant as any disrespect to you. I appreciate what you are trying to do and commend you for it.

Firstly, I never once said on the thread I expect people to be working full time for payments, I simply said I was expecting more dedication or there should be more people putting in more work (sorry if it sounded like I expected full-time workers that wasn't what I meant at all). As for the no budget part, I understand - but I didn't expect you to be paying people at this point anyway. My point was, I think more dedication, and/or better management is needed in order to speed up the process and get the server out.

As for

TLDR after reading this entire thread, if I had a nickle every time I heard a dying comment

I just want to let you know the last time people said MCGamer was dying it died. This was due to various reasons - some of which are listed on the thread. Maybe instead of overlooking the "MCGamer is dying" comments you should actually read into them and look from a different perspective. It seems to be Subtato and Col. Star are doing a good job at this as they actually acknowledged my points and admitted things need to change.

I didn't/don't expect MCGamer to be back to it's prime self upon release, I don't think you read my thread. What I was saying is - if the points I've addressed on my thread aren't fixed, the playerbase is going to dissipate/is already.

I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to respond to this thread, and I'm glad it's been brought to your attention because as you can see so far most of the community agrees with me. I'm always going to support this server and I'll buy a rank whenever they are released because I want this server to do well. Thank you for bringing it back, however I think things need to change in order to move forward.

Love you forever and always Chad.

Thanks.

 

[BarcelonaJay]

Figured I would give my two cents. If you look at different reports about how many people are playing Minecraft today it is unreal. More people are playing today then they did when most of us played 4-5 years ago. Yes of course many are not going to stick around but remember. There is a whole lot of kids that were two young to play when we played 4-5 years ago who now play. Again many people won't be playing in a few months but I'm not worried at all about this server "dying". If the right amount of time is put into this server and it can get back to where it used to be I honestly think that it will be fine.

Link to an article showing how many people are playing as of right now monthly.

How many Minecraft players are there?

Minecraft’s player count continues its upward trajectory

www.pcgamesn.com